The Accidental Groom

Keeping the Romance Alive

A guy in my office told me today that he’s planning to make his girlfriend a “romantic” Valentine’s Day dinner. I can barely remember a time when preparing a meal for my fiancée held any romantic significance, let alone enough to satisfy the mylar balloon-sized romantic obligations of Valentine’s Day. It’s a sad truth that as couples grow closer and a few dates becomes a lifetime together, the kinds of things once considered special occasions can become routine, if not mundane, exercises. Sharing a meal or a movie or a bed, particularly if you live together, is a matter of utility.

I like to think of myself as a romantic guy. I was a real pro at courtship. I planned fun, unique dates. I made mixtapes, for Christ’s sake. I always said the right thing and almost always meant it. Nonetheless, and despite having received no complaints of it, I can’t help but fear becoming complacent. In the pilot episode of HBO’s outstanding and prematurely canceled comedy “Bored to Death,” media mogul and career playboy George Christopher, played by Ted Danson, sits in a weed-hazed bathroom stall and describes to his young protege the effect they have on women:

We enthrall and then we disappoint.

The first promise I ever made my fiancée was that I would never take her for granted. I want her to feel like she’s being courted for the rest of her life, and I think she deserves it. But how much is too much to expect? How often must a couple celebrate their relationship, and do we really need American Greetings to tell us how and when when to do so? I’m never going to buy her a card at CVS, and I’ll probably never buy her chocolates or a dozen red roses or some shitty Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman necklace from Zales. Any bum with a few dollars to rub together can do those things.

I half-jokingly tweeted a couple weeks ago that I would be serving my lady a heart-shaped pizza for dinner on Feb. 14. I sat down at my desk this morning, realized it was Feb. 13, and I hoped with complete sincerity it was not too late to pre-order. It wasn’t. Our dinner will arrive at 7:30 p.m. tomorrow, and I know she won’t be disappointed.

In the meantime, does anybody know how to write a sonnet?

The Long and Short of It

It’s been an eventful week in Groomtown. Over the weekend I tried on a $3,000 wedding band—the first time I’ve ever put on a ring, ever—and then found a better one on Amazon for $65. Monday night I had a dream similar to those in which I show up four days late for a college exam—except in this one I woke up the morning of my wedding and realized we hadn’t planned anything: no flowers, no suits, no guests. Finally, this morning marked the expiration of three week-long holds my fiancée and I had placed on three venues throughout Detroit. Tonight it’s back to the drawing board, and I am now staring down the barrel of a very long and potentially very taxing engagement.

Long before I met my fiancée, I noticed an expectation among my friends or whoever else I heard speak about weddings that all engagements should last exactly 12 months. If a couple set a wedding date any sooner than a year following the proposal: “Wow, that’s so soon! Good for you for not wasting any time.” Any longer than a year: “Wow, that’s so long! Good for you for taking your time.” I’ve heard of more than one dude delaying or expediting their proposals to adhere to this schedule: “Well, Tanya wants a fall wedding, so I’m waiting until October to propose.”

With my own engagement now more than a month old, I can say authoritatively that heeding anyone other than your partner’s expectations of what your engagement and wedding should be is a big mistake (in addition to being some weak-ass bullshit). Nonetheless, my fiancée and I are now wrestling with the decision to settle for a less-than-ideal date and venue, get married this fall and get on with our life together, or wait until summer 2013 and have the luxury of choice in venue, date and vendors. I’m starting to wonder whether Tanya’s man was onto something.

Here’s what Emily Post has to say about long engagements in the 1922 edition of her classic tome “Etiquette.” (ED NOTE: This passage was omitted in my 1945 edition. Its presence here is the product of roughly eight minutes of Internet research.)

A long engagement is trying to everyone—the man, the girl, both families, and all friends. It is an unnatural state, like that of waiting at the station for a train, and in a measure it is time wasted.

Emily’s take is a bit dramatic, perhaps, but I’d be lying if I said the thought of a long engagement doesn’t worry me. This month has been more stressful than I would like to admit, and another year and a half in this “unnatural state” does not appeal to me.

Much more importantly, though, a long engagement really does seem like time wasted. When I asked my fiancée “Will you marry me?”, what I really meant was “Will you be married to me?” I’ve probably heard this 73 times in the past few weeks, but it’s true: A wedding is just one day in a lifetime of marriage. I proposed because I wanted my girlfriend to be my wife, and as much as I dread the Marriott, the notion of sacrificing 18 months as her husband for the sake of a more stylish wedding is troublesome for me. Is it really worth it?

I probably just should have waited for a more romantic holiday to propose, like V-E Day.

“Will You Marriott Me?”

I was surprised last Sunday morning to wake up in a guest bedroom of my fiancée’s parents house on the outskirts of Detroit. Two short mornings prior I’d sat at my desk and looked forward to a quiet weekend at home in Washington, D.C. By lunchtime I had booked two seats for a Saturday morning flight to the Rust Belt.

So how did this happen? Early last week I had agreed to spend a weekend touring potential wedding venues back home. I agreed to make the trip sometime in the next month or so. There was no rush, no urgency. Then, last Thursday night, my fiancée met a friend for some drinks. This friend happens to be something of a wedding professional—she’s a manager at a high-end bridal boutique. I imagine our pending nuptials dominated conversation that night, and by the time my lady got home, an unease seemed to have taken root in her. Full panic set in by the following morning, and 24 hours later we were on a plane heading west. The cause of this panic has many facets, but the most tangible was a rumored availability that might or might not have still been available at a venue that we had no appointment to see but that was, in any case, most definitely out of our price range.

Loyal readers might have guessed that I’m speaking, of course, of the airport Marriott, which turned out to be only the first of several sites we would visit over our three days in Detroit. Unbeknownst to me, my fiancée’s mother had arranged appointments at a number of other venues: a Greek community center (we’re not Greek), a yacht club (we don’t sail), a country club (we don’t golf), and a few others. In fairness to Mom, many of the places we saw—including the Marriott, surprisingly—would make fine settings for a wedding. All of the people we spoke to were real fucking sweethearts. And some of them actually had some decent dates available.

It’s pretty safe to assume at this point that when I am speaking of wedding planning, any instance of “we” or “our” refers to my fiancée, her mother and occasionally myself. So we discussed our options, and by this Wednesday morning we had placed temporary holds on dates at three separate venues. This was good. Momentum was building. Things were looking up. Before long I would be selecting wines and auditioning rockabilly bands, or so I thought.

Alas, it was not to last. As it happens, there hangs somewhere in my fiancée’s preposterous Catholic family tree a cousin who is getting married in August. And another in September. And, as I now know, having a wedding in the same calendar month as your third cousin is apparently a major wedding faux pas.

Wednesday morning we placed holds on three dates at three different venues. By Wednesday night, two were no longer viable. And what we’re left with, in some cruel twist of karma, is the airport Marriott, naturally. And I don’t know that I care to put up a fight. As I’ve said previously, it’s actually pretty nice, and the choice between the Marriott in October and spending another hellish year surrounded by bride porn and stationery samples is no choice at all. The truth is, we are competing for these dates with a glut of other couples who all became engaged during the holidays, and while I’m in no rush to have a wedding, per se, I can’t bear the thought of spending a year and a half whining about it. So, yeah, I’d like to get a date and location locked down as soon as possible, and as long as that date allows enough time to arrange a bitching bachelor weekend, it couldn’t come soon enough. And if that means having a wedding in the fucking Marriott, so be it.

Surplus to Requirements

Several weeks ago I asked Dr. Phil via Twitter for the gentlest way to tell the woman I love that I have no interest in getting married in a Marriott in the suburbs of her hometown. Inexplicably, I received no response whatsoever, and for this reason I accept no responsibility for what transpired thenceforth: namely, a series of events that has ultimately resulted in my being involuntarily excused, however briefly, from the wedding planning process.

My bride-to-be is the youngest of five daughters and the last among her sisters to walk down the aisle. Knowing that she and I were flirting with the idea of getting hitched in our adopted hometown of Washington, D.C.—where we met, spent our entire relationship and now reside—her parents, who by now must fancy themselves wedding experts, volunteered to begin scouting potential locations in and around Detroit, where my fiancée grew up. Meanwhile, I was handed a short but in my mind promising list of hip and edgy venues in D.C. and tasked with making inquiries at each. It’s impossible to know whether this was a fool’s errand from the start, but I had no sooner gotten my first returned call than her parents identified what they—and evidently their daughter—considered an ideal location: my worst fears confirmed, a Marriott in the suburbs west of the city. “The first airport hotel in America!” her father told me. Available the first weekend in July, naturally.

Though the specter of planning a wedding in less than six months would occur to me later, “Well, it’s not exactly what I had pictured for us,” was the first thought that came to mind. As the words tumbled forth, I knew my impulse to use the most delicate possible language was having the opposite effect: I sounded like a terrible prick, a stick in the mud whose sole mission was stamping out any flicker of excitement my bride might have felt.

“You know, most grooms don’t care at all about the planning.”

I’ve always suspected that those who know us must wonder—justifiably so—how a cynical asshole like me ended up with a woman who might very well be the sweetest, kindest, most considerate person on the planet. So as innocuous as her response might seem, its intent, as I inferred, was clear: “You can go fuck off now. I’m planning this wedding. I will inform you of my plans as a courtesy. Otherwise you’re an extra. A ballboy.” I reacted like a true brat, telling her that my feelings were hurt, that my opinion should matter, too, etc., everything you would expect from an over-sensitive little bitch. My tantrum lasted about two days.

My fiancée vehemently denies trying to muscle me out, but whatever her motive she was right to put me in my place. I’m in Detroit as I write this (how I ended up here is a story for another post), and yesterday we visited this so-called airport Marriott. It’s actually lovely, warm, unique, full of character and class… is this sounding familiar? The lesson is this: I’ve chosen to spend the rest of my life with this woman for a reason, and to question her taste or decision-making is absurd. I trust her. She’s better than me at everything. I am not necessary to this process, and that’s something best learned early. There will be certain details of our wedding plan that I feel stronger about than others, but none is worth losing sight of the fact that our wedding will be one small day in a lifetime of marriage. Nothing is more important than that.

The Calm Before the Storm

Words cannot describe the feeling I get when I listen to a phone conversation between my fiancée and her mother about my wedding, as I did again last night. I’m unsure how to explain my uneasiness about their planning (plotting?) other than to admit that despite my assurances of caring only of the quality of alcohol served and the musical genres played or not played at my reception, I do have some opinions on how and where this thing happens. Sue me.

Truthfully, though, for whatever amount of pissing and moaning I’ve done since the beginning of our engagement, the sailing so far has been as smooth as could be expected. Investigations into potential venues and dates have been largely superficial, and the only tiff we’ve had thus far lasted 20 minutes and ended when I apologized for whatever it was I did to cause her to freak out. Not much to complain about, really, and despite recently emerging evidence to the contrary (more on that later), I hope it portends well for the rest of this process.

My fiancée and I spent this past weekend in New York visiting some friends, and not until we were en route home Monday evening did we realize it had been days since we’d faced a wedding-related question. Basically, I said, “Hey, nobody even asked us if we’ve set a date or what color the bridesmaids will wear!,” to which she gave the inherently self-defeating retort: “Yeah, I know! It was really nice not to have to answer those questions for a couple days. By the way, don’t freak out but I’m going to buy some wedding magazines this week.”

So, if there is such a thing as an engagement honeymoon, I’ve taken this as a sign that ours is just about over. I have an inkling that the actual work of planning a wedding is not at all as tidy and sweet and charming as Hollywood would have us believe. That is to say I’m not envisioning a lighthearted montage of swatch books spread out over the kitchen table, champagne-fueled dress fitting parties and candlelit tastings with prospective caterers. There will be no David Gray or Nick Drake soundtrack. It is a shame that in real life it is not possible to get from proposal to wedding in 90 seconds. All I can do is keep my head down and do my damnedest to steer this ship clear of THE FUCKING MARRIOTT.

Anyway, it’s almost Thursday and so far no wedding mags. Stay tuned.

In Which Worlds Collide and Our Parents Speak for the First Time

Just before leaving the office late last Friday afternoon, I received this text message:

Just tlkd 2 [****]’s m and fa very nice

I wasn’t unprepared. My mom had possessed my fiancée’s parents’ phone number since New Year’s Day. She had also enlightened me to the fact (confirmed by Emily Post’s “Ettiquette”) that it is proper for the future groom’s family to initiate first contact between the parents. With that in mind, I can imagine the horror she must have experienced at receiving, before she had a chance to make her introduction, a lovely handwritten note from my future mom-in-law that had been posted a day prior in my fiancée’s hometown. Her call was sure to follow posthaste.

When a call to my parents’ land line (precious!) went unanswered, I left a message and texted my fiancée with the news. Lacking firsthand details, I scripted the conversation in my head as I walked from my office to catch the bus. Exact dialogue was unimportant, but I guessed the call went something like this: One or two minutes of niceties about how ecstatic everyone was about the engagement, followed by a prolonged but lighthearted round of one-upmanship, with everyone straining to pay me increasingly higher compliments.

I’m sure it’s a natural and common concern of anyone anticipating eventual parenthood, as I am, that their children will play well with others. I never predicted I would have the same sort of concern for my parents, but as I thought more seriously about the conversation that had just happened and those that would happen, I remembered the most significant takeaway from comedy writer Rodney Rothman’s absurd and hilarious memoir “Early Bird”: Old people can be every bit as petty and infantile as schoolkids.

To be clear, when it comes to our parents, there’s not an asshole among them. But despite their friendliness and their actually sharing much in common, there is a marked difference in the importance each places on certain conventions that will come into play as this wedding is planned. Will the ceremony take place in a church? My parents could care less. Hers? We’ll see. How strongly do her parents feel about the wedding taking place in her hometown rather than in the city where we met and have spent our entire relationship? Frankly, I’m not entirely sure how strongly my fiancée feels about that, and shouldn’t our feelings be more important than our parents’ anyway?

I did finally get in touch with my mom and heard a bit about her conversation with her counterparts. (My dad took a rain check, predictably; I assume hers would have done the same had the poor guy not answered the phone.) Nothing of consequence seems to have been discussed, but I have since received separate e-mails from each of my parents asking when and where I was planning to coordinate their first face-to-face meeting. Terrifying on an entirely different level, but a subject for a later date, thankfully.

I am absolutely sure that at some point before and certainly during this wedding her parents will witness me stinking drunk, and what will they have to say about that?